| 释义 |
-fold, suffix
(OE. -feald, Northumb. -fald, ME. -fald, -fold), corresponds to OFris., OS -fald (Du. -voud), OHG. -falt (MHG. -valt, mod.Ger. -falt), ON. -faldr (Sw. -fald, Da. -fold), Goth. -falþs; cognate with fold v.1, and with the equivalent Gr. -παλτος, -πλασιος, also, more remotely, with Gr. -πλο- in ἁπλός single, διπλός double (= L. duplus), and probably with the L. (sim-, du-, tri-) plex. Like the Gr. and L. equivalents, the Teut. suffix is appended to cardinal numerals (and adjs. meaning ‘many’), forming adjs. of which the primary sense is ‘folded in two, three, four, etc.,’ or ‘plaited of two, three, four, etc. strands’ (cf. ‘a threefold cord’), but which serve also and chiefly as arithmetical multiplicatives. The OE. forms, twi-, twio-, twiefeald, ðrifeald, fyðerfeald, which retain the combining form of the cardinal inherited from OTeut., were superseded in early ME. by new formations on the analogy of fivefold, etc., where the cardinal has the normal form.
The adjs. were already in OE. used absol. in the neut. (e.g. ðrifeald threefold, three times as much and as advbs. (= doubly, triply, etc.), and these uses still continue. In OE. the adverbial notion was also expressed by phrases like be fíffealdum, be maniᵹfealdum, in late Eng. † by fivefold, by manifold. The introduction of the Romanic synonyms double and treble or triple, to which were afterwards added the adapted Latin quadruple, quintuple, etc., has considerably narrowed the use of the derivatives in -fold; indeed the latter seem to be (in many dialects) no longer current among illiterate people. In educated use the strictly multiplicative sense survives chiefly in the adv. and quasi-n., and with reference to somewhat large numbers (‘He has repaid me tenfold’; ‘that is a thousandfold worse’); the adjs. express rather a plurality of things more or less different, than mere quantitative multiplication: cf. ‘a double charm’ with ‘a two-fold charm’.
In ME. a few new and unanalogical compounds were formed with the suffix, as thick-fold (= frequent, -ly), double-fold; but these did not survive into the modern period. Of the nonce-combinations, formed by attaching -fold to indefinite numerals, interrogatives, and the like, the following quots. afford examples.
1695W. Alingham Geom. Epit. 63 The quantitie of proportion is more generally defined by how much fold rather than by how many times the consequent is contained in the antecedent. 1833N. Arnott Physics (ed. 5) II. 78 The effect was found to be several fold greater than of steam from the same quantity of fuel. 1879H. George Progr. & Pov. ii. iii. (1881) 115 All of the things which furnish man's subsistence have the power to multiply many fold. |
